So Mobile Review's got its Sony Ericsson G700 review up in all its epic, War & Peace-style glory that the site is so well known for. Don't get us wrong, that's all well and good; it's an interesting phone and there's no question that we'll get around to reading the sucker from beginning to end in the near future. What really has our immediate attention, though, is one of the test photos taken with the G700's camera depicting some sort of touch user interface on a Nokia N95. Judging from everything we've seen of Nokia's own S60 touch UI, we can say with confidence that this ain't it; besides, the N95's design language is dead (just take one hard look at the N96 to confirm it) so we can't imagine some future device out of Espoo retrofitting a touchscreen onto an N95's shell. So what's going on here? Even if it's a third-party program, it can't work. It just can't. Or can it?

[Via Perpetuum Smoking Mobile]

Update: Turns out this is from the new Knight Rider series. Cars with Mac keyboards, modified N95s with touchscreens -- what other implausible goodies do these guys get? Thanks, everyone!

Move along, nothing too new and thrilling here. We hunted down Nokia's touch demo and were completely un-thrilled by the whole package. Sure, it's still early days for the interface, but it's a case of same old same old as it's sporting the same UI, same OS, but now instead of using the d-pad, you're able to poke about with your finger. The demo was running on a small tablet in software only, no hardware yet, though, as we've already mentioned, devices should start arriving in the second half of the year. Hopefully Nokia will see the error -- in our opinion -- of its ways and drop some glitz -- feel free to pop on over and visit NVIDIA for some inspiration, Nokia -- down on this fairly glitz-free bit of wizardry. Follow the juicy teaser below to see the gallery.

Nokia confirmed yesterday that we'd be seeing touch-enabled S60 devices in the second half of the year, which instantly started speculation over what a form the UI might take, as we've seen some pretty wild concepts from the Finns in the past. Sadly, however, it looks like touch S60 is going be exactly what the name implies and not a speck more -- check out this demo video posted on the Nokia marketing blog. Sure, it's being demoed off a PC on a touch tablet and anything could change, but we'd say that Nokia's goal of keeping S60 essentially the same to avoid confusing consumers is a little misplaced -- this seems like a terrific opportunity to roll out a sexy new version of S60 with touch at the forefront and re-capture the interest of all those Symbian users, so simply glomming touch onto the existing UI seems like a cop-out. Let's hope things get a little swoopier when the first devices show up in a few months, eh? Video after the break.

[Via Boy Genius Report]

After Sony Ericsson's big move into Windows Mobile territory (with help from HTC) you can be forgiven for thinking that Nokia might follow suit. Nevertheless, Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, brought down the hammer on those rumors by saying, "We don't have plans to do Windows in mobile at the moment." Read into that time-boxed, English-as-a-second-language statement what you will. Better yet for S60 series fans, he committed to launching the S60 touch-screen platform in the second half of the year. More on the S60 Touch interface as the Mobile World Congress unfolds.

Since its grand announcement last year, Nokia's next-gen UI for S60 has been little more than a pretty face teased to us by a handful of quick, glancing videos and overly slick ad campaigns; 2008's in full swing now, though, and the time has come for S60 Touch to get just a bit more real. The company has announced through its See into S60 blog that it'll be demoing the S60 Touch UI at Mobile World Congress this year -- a show that's creeping right up on us on the 11th of this month (yay!) -- and while there's no promise of exactly what's going to be demoed, they could demo just about anything and it'd be more than what's been demoed so far. Also on the docket is some info regarding "S60 sensor technologies," suggesting that S60 Touch devices will likely rely heavily on accelerometers and... well, you know, touch sensors to do their thing.

[Via All About Symbian]

Realistically we're still a good half year (at least) before we see any S60 Touch-based devices from Nokia or its software partners on store shelves, but in the meantime, Nokia's made it just a little easier for us all to fool ourselves into believing we're living on the bleeding edge of Espoo tech. Their Touch-inspired theme for S60 3rd Edition handsets is now freely available -- and while we wouldn't count on it magically adding a touchscreen to your N81 or N95, you can blur your eyes just a little bit here and play make-believe while you wait for the real thing. Actually doesn't look half bad, if we do say so ourselves.